The Lake eBook

’A strange idea has come into my mind, and I
cannot help smiling at the topsyturvydom of Nature,
or what seems to be topsyturvydom. You, who began
by living in your instincts, are now wandering beyond
Palestine in search of scrolls; and I, who began my
life in scrolls, am now going to try to pick up the
lost thread of my instincts in some great commercial
town, in London or New York. My life for a long
time will be that of some poor clerk or some hack
journalist, picking up thirty shillings a week when
he is in luck. I imagine myself in a threadbare
suit of clothes edging my way along the pavement,
nearing a great building, and making my way to my
desk, and, when the day’s work is done, returning
home along the same pavement to a room high up among
the rafters, close to the sky, in some cheap quarter.

’I do not doubt my ability to pick up a living—­it
will be a shameful thing indeed if I cannot; for the
poor curlew with its legs tied together managed to
live somehow, and cannot I do as much? And I have
taken care that no fetters shall be placed upon my
legs or chain about my neck. Anything may happen—­life
is full of possibilities—­but my first concern
must be how I may earn my living. To earn one’s
living is an obligation that can only be dispensed
with at one’s own great risk. What may
happen afterwards, Heaven knows! I may meet you,
or I may meet another woman, or I may remain unmarried.
I do not intend to allow myself to think of these
things; my thoughts are set on one thing only—­how
to get to New York, and how I shall pick up a living
when I get there. Again I thank you for what
you have done for me, for the liberation you have
brought me of body and mind. I need not have added
the words “body and mind,” for these are
not two things, but one thing. And that is the
lesson I have learned. Good-bye.

‘OLIVER GOGARTY.’

XIII

It would be a full moon on the fifteenth of July,
and every night he went out on the hillside to watch
the horned moon swelling to a disc.

And on the fifteenth, the day he had settled for his
departure, as he sat thinking how he would go down
to the lake in a few hours, a letter started to his
mind which, as well as he could remember, was written
in a foolish, vainglorious mood—­a stupid
letter that must have made him appear a fool in her
eyes. Had he not said something about—­The
thought eluded him; he could only remember the general
tone of his letter, and in it he seemed to consider
Nora as a sort of medicine—­a cure for religion.

He should have written her a simple little letter,
telling her that he was leaving Ireland because he
had suffered a great deal, and would write to her
from New York, whereas he had written her the letter
of a booby. And feeling he must do something
to rectify his mistake, he went to his writing-table,
but he had hardly put the pen to the paper when he
heard a step on the gravel outside his door.